Eye Candy for Today; John Frederick Lewis’s Lilium Auratum

Lilium Auratum (Golden-rayed Lily), John Frederick Lewis, oil on canvas, 54 x 34 in. ( 137 x 35 cm), in the collection of the City of Birmingham Museum. I can’t find an image on their site, so the link is to a large image on the Peaceful Artworks prints and reproductions site. Like many of the 19th century painters classified as Orientalists, John Frededrick Lewis was known for paintings of attractive young women in colorful and exotic costume. Throw in some lucious flowers and you have some key aspects of what made Orientalism so appealing to jaded European, and particularly British, art buyers. Everything about the subject, including the faces of the women, is idealized and renderded with exquisite attention to detail. I find it interesting that the majority of the composition, with the exception of the brightly lit background, is in shadow. That, along with the sidewards glance in our direction of the second woman (who I take to be a servant to the other) give the scene a feeling…